Three on a Match

19321932
PGPG
1h 3m

Although Vivian Revere is seemingly the most successful of a trio of reunited schoolmates, she throws it away by descending into a life of debauchery and drugs.Although Vivian Revere is seemingly the most successful of a trio of reunited schoolmates, she throws it away by descending into a life of debauchery and drugs.Although Vivian Revere is seemingly the most successful of a trio of reunited schoolmates, she throws it away by descending into a life of debauchery and drugs.

7.2/10

3.8K

Director
- Mervyn LeRoy
Writers
- Lucien Hubbard(screen play)
- Kubec Glasmon(story)
- John Bright(story)
Stars

Top credits

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Bette Davis and Joan Blondell in Three on a Match (1932)

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Joan Blondell and Warren William in Three on a Match (1932)

Buster Phelps and Warren William in Three on a Match (1932)

Bette Davis, Joan Blondell, and Ann Dvorak in Three on a Match (1932)

Frankie Darro, Virginia Davis, and Junior Johnston in Three on a Match (1932)

Joan Blondell, Ann Dvorak, and Lyle Talbot in Three on a Match (1932)

Director
- Mervyn LeRoy
Writers
- Lucien Hubbard(screen play)
- Kubec Glasmon(story)
- John Bright(story)
All cast & crew
See more cast details at IMDbPro

Mary Keaton, Vivian Kirkwood (née Revere), and Ruth Westcott have just run into each other having not seen each other in ten years since they graduated from Public School 62 together, and become friends of sorts in their re-acquaintance. Their intervening lives went much as probably would have been predicted when they were in public school: Mary, the troublemaker who almost didn't graduate with her class, spent some time in a reformatory but went straight and became a showgirl; Vivian, the popular beauty with a charmed life, married wealthy and renowned lawyer Robert Kirkwood, the two with an adolescent son, Robert Jr.; and Ruth, the quiet, hard-working, smart one, who became a stenographer. While Mary's life took a positive turn since her reformatory years, Vivian has come to the realization that she is unhappy with her life, its path a little too easy in its predetermination. She realizes she probably never loved Robert. Her quest for pleasure, with a blessing of sorts from Robert who doesn't want his wife, whom he still loves, to be as distant as she seems, will affect Mary, as well. Their collective destinies may be foreshadowed by an old wives' tale about three sharing a single match, from which the film takes its name. —Huggo (updated by R.M. Sieger)

pre code film prohibition era girls' reformatory stock market crash 1929 reunion 132 more

Trivia
The title refers to a now extinct one-time superstition that if three people were to light their cigarettes from the same match, the third person to do so would meet with misfortune. Once attributed to World War I, when it was sometimes thought that lighting a match long enough to light three cigarettes would attract enemy gunfire, it later emerged that a match company had "created" the superstition to cut down on the sharing of matches and thus increase sales.

Goofs
In a montage, the year 1921 shows a sheet music cover of "The Sheik of Araby", mentioning it was sung by Eddie Cantor in the play "Make it Snappy". The play didn't have it's run until April to July of 1922.

Quotes
Mary Keaton, aka Mary Bernard: You're a fool, Vivian. Take it from someone who's been one.

Connections
Edited from The Public Enemy (1931)

Soundtracks
Smiles
(1917) (uncredited)
Music by Lee S. Roberts
Played as background to introduce the year 1919

Top review

Pre-Code Soap Opera With Style

THREE ON A MATCH turns out to be bad luck for a trio of young women meeting again years after their high school graduation.

This pre-Code Warner Bros. drama takes the old theme of a good girl gone bad, but deliberately shies away from platitudes or even any hope for redemption. The film's fallen woman lands in the gutter quite literally and the movie leaves her there, with the plot offering no loopholes for her possible regeneration.

Joan Blondell, Ann Dvorak & Bette Davis portray the three friends whose lives take them down very different paths. Blondell, as the bad girl turned actress, steals the film with her blonde brashness and good humor. Dvorak, as the rich girl with the husband & child, is so relentlessly unsatisfied and morose that she becomes quite a burden for the viewer to bear. Demure Davis, as the poor secretary, is given very little to do and gets to exhibit none of the fire which would characterize her performances in years to come.

The male members of the cast give good support to the ladies. Warren William, who so often played the villain, here is given the sympathetic role of Dvorak's harried husband; he gives his usual sophisticated performance. Lyle Talbot plays a society cad & coward, destroyed by gambling & booze. Although he has but one scene, Edward Arnold is most effective as a menacing crime boss - we first come upon him while he is calmly plucking hairs out of his nose! Humphrey Bogart & Allen Jenkins play his dangerous enforcers.

Movie mavens will spot in uncredited roles Grant Mitchell as the girls' high school principal, Clara Blandick as Blondell's distraught mother, Herman Bing as an exuberant school band leader and the glorious Glenda Farrell, not quite yet a star, as a reformatory inmate.

An amusing aspect of the film is how it shows the passage of time by incorporating popular tunes of the era, including "Smiles," "The Sheik of Araby," "The Prisoner's Song," "Charleston," "Dancing With Tears In My Eyes," "I Found A Million Dollar Baby" & "Happy Days Are Here Again."

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Notice the reference to Ivar Kreuger, the real-life industrialist who attempted to monopolize the match market. Crimes and scandal dogged his organization and he died a suicide in Paris in March of 1932, seven months before the premiere of THREE ON A MATCH. On New Year's Eve, 1932, Warner Bros. would release THE MATCH KING, starring Warren William and loosely based on Kreuger's nefarious life.

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